Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the College of New Jersey, the university moved to Newark in 1747, then to Princeton in 1756 and was renamed Princeton University in 1896. The present-day College of New Jersey in nearby Ewing Township, New Jersey, is an unrelated institution. Princeton was the fourth chartered institution of higher education in the American colonies.Princeton had close ties to the Presbyterian Church, but has never been affiliated with any denomination [9] and today imposes no religious requirements on its students.